Yet, if they failed to locate the trap door, it could be only a matter of an hour or so and he would be choking his life out in his own blood outside in the street. Either way was going to be extremely painful, and he had an idea that asphyxiation would prove the more so; but it had the advantage that at least he would make sure of not falling alive into Grauber's hands. And, after all, there was always the chance that by some miracle he might succeed in getting the keys.
Old Ciska had been peering uncertainly round her through the bluish haze. Now she muttered something to Pipi. Turning to Gregory he exclaimed excitedly, 'She says this is it! That in the old days the beer cellar used to be here!'
The old crone was nodding her head up and down and pointing with a skinny finger to a wide embrasure about fifteen feet away between two great squat pillars that supported a vaulted arch. 'She says that's where the scantling used to run,' Pipi interpreted, 'and that the trapdoor is in the corner by the left-hand pillar.'
Gregory was already staring in that direction; but instead of joy his face held a worried frown. In more recent years the embrasure had been used as a bin for empty bottles. Hundreds of them were stacked in it, six or eight deep and five feet high. To shift enough of them to get at the floor under any part of the stack was going to be a formidable task. In consternation he said, 'Ask her if she's certain absolutely certain.'
Pipi put the question and, with a muffled cackle of laughter from behind her scarf, Ciska began to babble cheerfully. 'She should know, even after all these years. Bela the pantry man had brought her there when she was a girl, given her too much beer and tossed her petticoats over her head. Afterwards they came there often. Once they had nearly been caught by the cellar master. It was then Bela had shown her the trapdoor. He had pulled it up and made her hide crouching on the steps underneath it until the old boy had gone. Soon after that Bela had been taken for the war, and there had been a child. The old Baroness had been very angry and sent her to live in the country. But there had been plenty of fine fellows there. None of them were such lusty chaps as Bela, though…'
Cutting her short, Pipi told Gregory that he felt sure the old woman knew what she was talking about.
'Come on then!' Gregory flung himself at the left-hand end of the great stack of bottles and began to throw them into the farthest corner. It was gruelling work and terribly exasperating; for no sooner had a space a foot or so deep been cleared at the side of the pillar than more bottles from the centre of the stack rolled down into it. Soon the pile of bottles and broken glass in the corner threatened to block the passage, so they had to start another pile against the cellar door. Smoke was still seeping down from above through all sorts of unsuspected crannies and the atmosphere was stifling.
Five, ten, fifteen minutes had slipped by since they had left' the courtyard. They were still only halfway down the stack, and fresh avalanches set them back every few moments. Gregory began to despair of reaching the floor before they were exhausted. Old Ciska laboured manfully, but Pipi suddenly left them, so Gregory feared he had been forced to throw his hand in. But Pipi returned carrying a bundle of new laths that had been cut for him to bin away the year's making of Baratsch, and with these they succeeded in shoring up the bulk of the remaining bottles in the stack.
After that the work went easier, although Gregory was worried now that soon the courtyard would be getting so thick with smoke that Sabine would either faint from suffocation, or find herself compelled to break out with her servants into the street.
Sweating, half blinded, and with throats like limekilns, they kept at it until the last dozen bottles in the corner where they were delving had been thrown aside. Gregory gave a grunt of relief and joy. They had uncovered a square stone slab with an iron ring in it.
Seizing the ring, he pulled with all his strength; but the stone would not yield. Pipi knelt down and jabbed fiercely with his jemmy at one end of it until the edge of the iron had entered the crack between the stones far enough to hold. Throwing his weight on the jemmy, he heaved. The stone lifted slightly. Another minute and they had it up. A draught of cold clean air hit them in the face. In great gulps they drew it down into their bursting, lacerated lungs.
For a few minutes they were too exhausted to do anything but crouch there, then Gregory said, 'Pipi, tell old Ciska that if I ever get back to Hungary I'll give her a pension for life. Take her up now, and bring down your mistress. And the torches and things Mario was going to collect for me.'
The wait for Sabine seemed interminable, but just bearable now that he had fresh air. When she arrived she was almost fainting, and being supported between Pipi and Mario. They said that except for Magda, who had remained with her mistress, all the other servants had found the smoke bearable no longer and gone out into the street.
The draught from the trapdoor speedily revived Sabine; but she drew back from its dark depths with an expression of horror. Mario handed Gregory a big torch and a canvas bag half full of other things. Gregory said to the two men, 'I'll never be able to repay you both for all you have done. Go up now and out into the street. When you are questioned tell everyone that your mistress and I decided that we would rather die in the palace than be handed over to the Gestapo; and that between us we swallowed the contents of a bottle of sleeping tablets.'
Switching on the torch, he shone it down into the cavity. Its beam showed a flight of crumbling stone steps that merged into darkness.
'I can't!' gasped Sabine. 'I can't! We don't know where it leads. We may never get out!'
'Courage, darling, courage!' Descending the first few steps, Gregory took her hand and drew her after him.
No sooner was her head below the level of the ground than Pipi and Mario shouted after them 'May God keep you! Good luck! Good luck!' then lowered the heavy stone into place.
They had escaped from the Gestapo and from Grauber; but, as the dank cold of the cave struck an instant chill into their bones, even Gregory's heart quailed at the thought of what now lay before them. This uncharted escape route most hold many perils. If the Goddess of Fortune should turn her back, they might die there in the darkness under Buda hill.
In The Caves
Chapter 18
The steps were only about eighteen inches wide, but they 1 were steep and, as Gregory saw from the first flash of his torch, there were well over twenty of them. There was no rail to which to hold on either side. To the left a wall of rough hewn rock rose from them; to the right there was nothing a: sheer drop into unplumbed darkness. One stumble on those narrow stairs and, with nothing to clutch at, it would mean a headlong plunge into the gulf below.
Warily, Gregory tested every step before putting his weight on it. The staircase was far older than the palace above it and had probably been made many hundreds, perhaps even a thousand years ago. In the course of time earth tremors and gradual subsidence had caused some of the steps to crack and loose comers to fall away from them. It looked as if, at any moment, pressure upon one might cause an avalanche, which would send himself and Sabine cascading to the bottom.
Sabine tried to drive from her imagination a picture of both of them with bruised bodies and broken bones, half buried beneath a great pile of stones down on the still unseen floor of the cave. That picture was swiftly succeeded by another. Perhaps the staircase had no ending; its bottom half might already have fallen away. If the gap were too big for them to dare jump down into the cave they would then be forced to retreat: to fight their way again through that searing, blinding smoke, and, after all, fall into the hands of their enemies. But worse. Most ghastly thought of all. Perhaps the stone flag above them was so heavy that they would not be able to lift it from below. In that case these crumbling steps would become a terrible prison from which there was no escape at all.